Why is F a dirty word?

There’s appears to be a general consensus, real or imagined, that F is a dirty word. I have never understood why. Birds do it. Bees do it. Even hippopotamuses do it, shaking the earth under their feet. I have done it God knows often enough, without the slightest guilt. For I grew up in an era when people believed it’s better to make love, not war. Even today’s kids use the F word with great gusto. Grownups do as well, not because they want to offer sex to each other. It’s just another word like ooh, aah, lol or omg.

The phonetics of the word is immaculate. You never feel disgust when you hear it. Not unless it’s nuanced in an indelicate manner, in which case all words sound awful. The Big G, God or Google, take your pick, tells me it emanated from the Latin futuere. From futuere came the French foutre, the Italian fottere, the Romanian futere, the Catalan fotre, the Portuguese foder, the German ficken, the Dutch fokken and the Swedish focka. Though first used in a poem in 1475, the F word took 500 years to break into the OED. In 1972.

Actually the F word’s quite charming. Men and women, married or more often not married to each other, use it with easy abandon in private. But the moment it enters public discourse, there’s widespread outrage. Is it something about civilisation that it outlaws all intensely felt words? Or is it just plain hypocrisy? Indian film makers, more wary than their peers elsewhere, often try to sneak in such words. The best example is Aamir Khan (Aamir being Aamir is forgiven everything) who so charmingly snuck the DK Bose song into his movie. It worked like a shot.

It’s not just the F word. Everything remotely related to it bothers us. The BMC has banned mannequins wearing lingerie because our corporators (largely men themselves) believe the mannequins arouse wicked thoughts in men. Indonesia has banned bikinis in the Miss Universe contest. Siwan district in Bihar has banned girls from wearing jeans and tees and using cell phones. Haryana khaps followed suit. A Varanasi college too. And it’s not just here. Schools in California, Idaho, Connecticut have done the same. Saudis, on the other hand, have stopped giving visas to good looking men so that their women are not corrupted. (The F word here stands in for fear.) Closer home, a policeman on Marine Drive followed up our moral brigade’s overdrive by picking up a couple sitting near the sea, threatened the boy for inappropriate behaviour and sent him off, then raped the girl inside the policy chowky. So much for moral policing.

In fact, it has led to more sex crimes. The more we ban stuff, the more desirable they become. So what we have now is far more sexual crimes and far less real sex. If published data on our sexual behaviour is to be believed, far fewer people do it these days. They are too busy watching and discussing it. At 97 billion dollars a year, the porn industry is today the fastest growing business on the net and (some say) off it as well.

Despite all the hype, couples have far less sex today than ever before. Psychiatrists blame it on boredom. Doctors say its diabetes and hypertension. Spiritual leaders attribute it to mankind’s moral decline. I think it has more to do with the fact that the new consumerism has created more expectations than any poor guy can fulfil. Champagne and candle light are wonderful things. But they don’t always add up to great sex. As for bans, they only provoke perverts to assert their perversities.

We have outlawed the F word, true. But what are the options? The H word? Well, we have an entire generation hooked on hypocrisy. The R word? Yes, we have too many louts roaming the streets looking for hapless victims. Last fortnight saw a 3 year old child raped, a 86 year old woman gang-raped and a blind girl who was raped, impaled with an iron rod and killed. Or the M word, which stands for moral policing? The perfect incentive for sex crimes to flourish like corruption flourishes every time we create a stronger law. Give me back my F word any day. At least F stands for freedom too.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Author

Pritish Nandy writes, paints, makes movies and occasionally, when he wins an election, sits in Parliament. He has been writing for The Times of India for over 26 years. In "Extraordinary Issue", he talks to all those who find his views controversial, challenging, charming or even utterly despicable. Just one small caveat. Nandy is always on the move, travelling for a film, writing a book, working on an exhibition of his paintings. Or simply eating lotus. So there could be occasional gaps, the odd delay. But Nandy is Nandy. He never ignores a barb, never lets a compliment go by without swatting it hard.

Pritish Nandy writes, paints, makes movies and occasionally, when he wins an election, sits in Parliament. He has been writing for The Times of India for ov. . .

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Pritish Nandy writes, paints, makes movies and occasionally, when he wins an election, sits in Parliament. He has been writing for The Times of India for over 26 years. In "Extraordinary Issue", he talks to all those who find his views controversial, challenging, charming or even utterly despicable. Just one small caveat. Nandy is always on the move, travelling for a film, writing a book, working on an exhibition of his paintings. Or simply eating lotus. So there could be occasional gaps, the odd delay. But Nandy is Nandy. He never ignores a barb, never lets a compliment go by without swatting it hard.

Pritish Nandy writes, paints, makes movies and occasionally, when he wins an election, sits in Parliament. He has been writing for The Times of India for ov. . .